Early-autumn snowfall lays a hush on Yosemite Valley. Monolithic El Capitan, at left,
shared the same tastes in dwelling places. The
Indians built their u-ma -chas in the seven
square-mile glacier-carved gorge. Here 20th
century man also has put up most of his
houses-the hospital, Curry Village, Yosemite
Lodge, and Ahwahnee Hotel.
Some 1,200 people live in this small city
year round. Understandably, the congestion
and traffic jams are at their worst in this area.
Thanks to intense effort by the Park Service,
however, I found less crowding than I'd seen
a few years earlier.
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"We've cut out almost half the spaces in the
campgrounds," Superintendent Lynn Thomp
son told me. "That has reduced the number of
valley visitors. We've banned parking in front
of the Visitor Center, and taken all but bicycle
and bus traffic off the Mirror Lake and Mari
posa Grove roads. But the best moves we
made were the establishment of free bus sys
tems and making the valley road pattern into
a one-way loop."
The transport of the future will be strik
ingly modern. The Park Service has experts
National Geographic,June 1974